Grand Canyon National Park
Grand Canyon National Park is America's 15th oldest national park,founded on February 26,1919 on the same day Acadia National Park was founded in Maine.The Makkari High School Young Birder's Society coordinates an end-of-the-year trip to the park every year during the last week of May.It is 277 miles long,10 miles wide and a mile deep,getting deeper by a foot every 1000 years,making it the largest canyon in the world.Over 370 species of birds have been seen here. Grand Canyon was officially designated a national park in 1919, though the landmark had been well known to Americans for over thirty years prior. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt visited the site and said: "The Grand Canyon fills me with awe. It is beyond comparison—beyond description; absolutely unparalleled through-out the wide world... Let this great wonder of nature remain as it now is. Do nothing to mar its grandeur, sublimity and loveliness. You cannot improve on it. But what you can do is to keep it for your children, your children's children, and all who come after you, as the one great sight which every American should see." Despite Roosevelt's enthusiasm and his strong interest in preserving land for public use, the Grand Canyon was not immediately designated as a national park. The first bill to establish Grand Canyon National Park was introduced in 1882 by then-Senator Benjamin Harrison, which would have established Grand Canyon as the second national park in the United States after Yellowstone. Harrison unsuccessfully reintroduced his bill in 1883 and 1886; after his election to the presidency, he established the Grand Canyon Forest Reserve in 1893. Theodore Roosevelt created the Grand Canyon Game Preserve by proclamation on 28 November 1906 and Grand Canyon National Monument in 1908. Further Senate bills to establish the site as a national park were introduced and defeated in 1910 and 1911, before the Grand Canyon National Park Act was finally signed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919. The National Park Service, established in 1916, assumed administration of the park.At least 700 people have died at the Grand Canyon by a diverse number of ways to die including falling,off the rim of the canyon,flash floods,drowning in the Colorado River,plane crashes,freak accidents,suicide and murder, The creation of the park was an early success of the conservation movement. Its national park status may have helped thwart proposals to dam the Colorado River within its boundaries. (Later, the Glen Canyon Dam would be built upriver.) In 1975, the former Marble Canyon National Monument, which followed the Colorado River northeast from the Grand Canyon to Lee's Ferry, was made part of Grand Canyon National Park. In 1979, UNESCO declared the park a World Heritage Site. In 2010, Grand Canyon National Park was honored with its own coin under the America the Beautiful Quarters program Plot After Fabia returned home from traveling the country birding,she and her friend,Casey rushed to Grand Canyon National Park after hearing reports of a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher,an elegant gray and salmon-pink flycatcher festooned with absurdly large tail,being seen near the Bright Angel Trail just outside of the North Rim Lodge.When they arrived,the park had been hit by a freak cold front which had hit northern Arizona overnight,dropping the temperature dramatically.After successfully finding the rare new arrival,the girls headed to the lodge and got some sleep before returning to the canyon to do some more birding. Category:Places Category:National Parks